Hi everyone!
Ed and I have been discussing the future of the High Score Challenge and have decided it would be useful to have the opinions you guys before we make a final decision. We no longer feel we are able to dedicate the time needed to maintain a two weekly schedule so are looking for alternatives. My preference is to end the two weekly format and replace it with a much longer term, general high score competition where a forum member can nominate any game they want. This game will have a thread created for it and all members can submit scores to this thread forever. Eventually there will be a thread for every game, every time you play a game and get a new high score you can submit it. It could also open up the possibilty of competioin in games like elite which don't really have a 'points' system or exile which can take years to play through!
Anyone have thoughts on this or any other format?
Cheers,
Sydney

Yes good idea! I know it must be a lot of work to maintain the current two-weekly challenge format, especially as numbers have started to dwindle over the last year or so. So an open challenge format with a long term / permanent set of high score threads would definitely be good and would certainly reduce your time commitment.

But how would tracking the table of scores for each game work? One method could be to create a "top ten" table as an in-line table in the first post, then just advise people to copy and update the table with each submission? (this would also limit entries to the top ten for each game?)

I'd also not rule out a future fixed time competion though, part of the fun was the intense effort to get a good score before the deadline. And you may find more interest and more people willing to coordinate future competitions, as an effect of the open high score challenges... So maybe another Christmas or a Summer games could happen in the future...?

A huge thank you to yourself and to Ed for running the HSC so far. They've been loads of fun, so I really appreciate your efforts. I understand about the time commitment, I've not really had much time myself for gaming in recent weeks. I like the idea of having a permanent high score table for each game though, so +1 from me!

For now I'm going to start a 'Game request thread' where people can ask for a new thread to be started for a game they would like to submit a high score for.I'm also going to request a couple of games to get the ball rolling.
Does anyone have a good idea for a name for this? I'm going to start with 'Stardot High Score Table', but I'm sure we can come up with sometghing better than that.
I'd also like to overhaul the scoring system as the previous one is a bit complicated so I'd be in favour of a straght percentage of the highest score unless anyone has an alternative.
One suggestion I've had for maintaning the tables is to have each person who submits a score copy the table and add their own score then all Ed and I have to do is copy this table to the first post. I like sound of this so might give it a go for a few months.Another suggestion was to 'seed' some threads with scores from the high score challenges. I'm not so keen on this, mainly as I'd like to encourage those who have previously joined in to come back although by not doing it their scores may never make it. I'm not dead set against it so if others think it's a good idea I'm happy to go along with it.
I think I'd like to have occaisional 'bonus' rounds similar to the Christmas Cracker round that just finished. Maybe at easter,summer,christmas etc.
Cheers,
Simon

sydney wrote: I'd also like to overhaul the scoring system as the previous one is a bit complicated so I'd be in favour of a straght percentage of the highest score unless anyone has an alternative.

Is this even needed at all now? As we're not working to a fixed time for the competition, is there a need to compare across games? Could we just leave each game as it's own competition, so the highest score from that game wins? (or is this too simple?)

A late reply just not had the time this week, personally I don't have a preference for any format, so I'm happy to go with whatever suggestions have come up already , bonus rounds are a good shout too.

As long as I can play Boulderdash , maybe one with Jet Set Willy , which would give me an incentive to play it through again.

chrisn wrote:A huge thank you to yourself and to Ed for running the HSC so far. They've been loads of fun, so I really appreciate your efforts. I understand about the time commitment, I've not really had much time myself for gaming in recent weeks.

Same here (the and large thank you!), and also "recent weeks" comment but replace with "recent months". I keep trying to get back into retro life but so much going on right now! I'll go and have a look at the new format ...

sydney wrote:Hi everyone!
Ed and I have been discussing the future of the High Score Challenge and have decided it would be useful to have the opinions you guys before we make a final decision. We no longer feel we are able to dedicate the time needed to maintain a two weekly schedule so are looking for alternatives. My preference is to end the two weekly format and replace it with a much longer term, general high score competition where a forum member can nominate any game they want. This game will have a thread created for it and all members can submit scores to this thread forever. Eventually there will be a thread for every game, every time you play a game and get a new high score you can submit it. It could also open up the possibilty of competioin in games like elite which don't really have a 'points' system or exile which can take years to play through!
Anyone have thoughts on this or any other format?
Cheers,
Sydney

I think these threads should be in a separate sub forum from the seasonal high score challenges. Then we could also include results from old magazines (with comments about how likely it is that they are real) and our own old high scores.

As to the validity of high scores: I remember a comment about Planetoid high scores in one of the mags, it was I think a score in the region of 350 or 450K, and the guy writing that column wrote something like 'this is the highest score I've seen though unconfirmed reports (i.e. cheats) clock in at over half a million'. But as I've done 888150 I know for a fact it's possible... There were a few scores in later years that I don't believe are real, or perhaps they were done with an Electron version on the BBC, or Electron version on the Electron as no proper distinction was made in the mags (scores of more than 2 and even 3 million for Planetoid, but who knows, perhaps it's possible with the BBC version on the BBC). I collected various of the high scores from mags along with Dave M many years ago, I also scanned a few more from some mags such as practical computing years ago, so if there's interest I will dig it out. I'd like to see one posting with all highest known scores with source, and date. For people writing here also, I would like to see scores from any date in the past.